Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Long-term thinking can be tough in an increasingly
short-term-focused world. So it pays to occasionally reflect on ways of
counter-acting the daily noise that threatens to drain our energy and
commitment.

In this week’s Coffee Break, we highlight articles that
reinforce the principles of discipline and sticking to the long-term goals
you set at your most lucid moments.

We publish these links each week to provide you with
client-ready articles that reinforce a patient, disciplined approach to
money. We don’t necessarily endorse everything in each article, but there are
always a few nuggets to use.

The first rule in sticking to a
long-term goal, like building a retirement nest egg, is accepting that it’s
hard to do. No-one is perfect and we wouldn’t be human if there were not
the occasional lapse. This article provides some useful tips for staying
focused, like resisting the all-or-nothing approach and breaking down big
goals into lots of smaller ones.

People who are tempted to break a diet
often say they feel a sense of panic and lack of control. The strategy for
dealing with this often comes back to having a framework for times when
emotion threatens to get the better of us. The same principle applies to
long-term investing. This article from The Wall Street Journal provides
some practical tips to beat temptation.

Long-term thinking has always been
hard, but it’s an even bigger test these days in the face of a 24/7 news
cycle and the flood of digital information coming our way. Every day, it
seems, there’s a new “unprecedented crisis”. Sometimes the best way of
dealing with the madness is making fun of it. And that’s just what this
article does.